Professor Raghavan N. Iyer

In order to comprehend consciousness from the standpoint of the cosmos as a whole, consciousness must refer to that which exists even before a cosmos comes into being. It is that which subsists and persists during the epochal manifestation of a cosmos

as well as that which endures after the dissolution of the cosmos. If that stream of consciousness is unborn and undying, unbroken and ever existing,

It must also be unmodified by all that is experienced through involvement in a form. Consideration of the nature of primordial consciousness is essentially the recognition of changelessness in a world of change.

That which is entirely changeless is beginningless and endless, unconditionally eternal. To begin to contemplate this unbroken consciousness,

and to consider the meaning of manifestation in the light of such an eternal reality is something the human mind is scarcely prepared to do. When confronted with such a prospect, the mind, which tends to be conditioned by sense experience,

by memories and by anticipations, immediately begins to reflect the succession and variety of changes. As the mind is itself part of nature and part of matter in the deepest sense,

it encounters profound obstacles to the ceaseless contemplation of the changeless. Yet, it is possible through meditation to penetrate within ourselves beyond the veil of concepts

to a deeper sense of being which is beginningless and endless, unmodified by the mind. It is possible to experience oneself in relation to that which has no frame of reference in terms of space and time,

No images refer to existing or possible objects.

To rise to this level of imageless consciousness requires unremitting perseverance, because one must put aside innumerable layers and levels of language and thought.

To understand this is to recognize in relation to the mind that which intuitive contemporary physicists have begun to understand about the many-layered and many-leveled structure of space. Employing what is now known as quantum physics,

One can generate models which allow, at any given time, myriads of possible worlds in reference to any single atom, electron or photon. So too with consciousness.

It is possible to use the mind to abstract away altogether from what actually exists. Yet, at the same time, one may preserve a sense of being

The absence of a framework need not cause one to dissolve away and altogether lose one's sense of self-existence. To think in these ways is to begin to draw upon the metaphysically profound and purifying potential of space.

At the simplest level one may, like Ralph Waldo Emerson,

see the heavens as a great cleanser and purifier of consciousness. An uninformed eye sees the sky as bare space, but many people are by now aware that space is not totally empty.

that there is matter and radiation in all the spaces between the galaxies. It is empty only by reference to the familiar space of the world of objects. Turning the idea over in the mind again,

One might ask why the night sky, seemingly so empty, in fact suggests an indefinite extension in every direction, provides an intimation of a million galaxies.

It seems as if there is at once some kind of structure and some kind of transcendence of all possible structures.

To reflect upon these lines is to begin to approach the esoteric conception of space, which is neither a limitless void nor a conditioned fullness, but both.